AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL DESCRIBES THE LARVAA N AT IRATEN CASE AS AN ‘UNFAIR TRIAL
Under the title ‘Algeria: 38 death sentences handed down after an unfair trial’, Amnesty International’s annual report, published on 29 May 2024, looks back at the case of those condemned to death in Kabyle.
All those condemned to death were from the Larvaa n At Iraten region (Tizi Ouzou), arrested following the attempted genocide orchestrated by the Algerian services in August 2021 in Kabylia. This case is commonly known as the ‘Larvaa n At Iraten affair’.
After a first trial in November 2022, inspired by Stalinist methods, in which 54 death sentences were handed down, including five in absentia, the number of death sentences was reduced to 38 on 23 October 2023 by the Criminal Court of Algiers. In other words, this court plays with death sentences like a grocer plays with chickpeas.
‘The number of death sentences handed down in 2023 [in Algeria] is linked to a single criminal case marked by significant violations of the right to a fair trial’, writes Hassina Oussedik, Director of Amnesty International Algeria, who renews her call to the Algerian regime to abolish the death penalty.
After the murders of Hervé Gourdel and Albert Ebossé, the Algerian services have now plotted the murder of Djamel Bensmail, a young activist in the Hirak protest movement, in a new operation to demonise Kabylia. This murder was committed in a very specific context.
In August 2021, Kabylia suffered the deadliest fires in its history, caused by arson: almost 500 people burnt alive, thousands of hectares destroyed, thousands of livestock charred, wildlife completely decimated. Scenes of apocalypse. There can be no doubt that the fires were started by arsonists. Numerous testimonies from local residents and forest rangers, as well as videos, clearly show the sophistication of the means used to organise such a blaze. Means that only the services of the Algerian regime could have at their disposal. The Algerian regime hastily accused Morocco, Israel, and the MAK of being behind the fires. Curiously, the accusations against Morocco and Israel were not followed up.
Young Djamel, known on social networks for his activism in the Hirak movement, hostile to those in power in Algeria, and his pro-Kabylia stance, was being closely watched by the Algerian political police. On his way to help his Kabyle friends fight the fires, he found himself bundled into a police van. After stabbing him to death inside the van, the police threw him to the mercy of a bruised crowd, portraying him as the arsonist responsible for the fires that had been ravaging the region for two days. The only people responsible for Djamel Bensmail’s death are the Algerian police.
This tragedy comes three months after the Algerian regime promulgated the notorious Article 87-bis of the Penal Code, which criminalises all political opposition by classifying it as a terrorist act, and at the same time classified the Kabyle independence movement (MAK), despite its profoundly peaceful nature, as a terrorist organisation.
The political nature of the ‘Larvaa n At Iraten affair’ has been clearly established. The Algerian authorities wanted to deal a fatal blow to Kabyle irredentism and the growing demand for independence. Many of those sentenced to death were not at the scene of young Djamel’s murder, and some were actually abroad. Others were sentenced for their membership, real or supposed, of the MAK pro-independence movement. Algerian judges, so quick to convict on the basis of empty cases, ignore cases of torture reported by prisoners. These corrupt judges, in the service of the regime, take no action and ensure total impunity for torturers.
The Algerian regime remains deaf to all the recommendations and calls to order made during its UPR (Universal Periodic Review) in 2022 and by the UN human rights rapporteurs, Mary Lawlor and Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, who pointed to serious human rights violations by the Algerian regime in their respective reports in 2023.
Amnesty International
HRDK – Human Rights Defense Kabylia